


Hey Daddy-O I Don't Want To Go Down To The Basement

by dancinbutterfly



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Asking About A Partner's Wants, BDSM, BDSM Scene, Boys Kissing, Canon Compliant, Childhood Trauma, Claustrophobia, Consensual Kink, Daddy Issues, Daddy Kink, Dave calls Klaus Number Four, Dom Dave Katz, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Play, Dominance, Emotional Intimacy, Explicit Consent, Explicit Requests, Falling In Love, First Time, Gay Sex, Gentle Dom Dave Katz, Getting Together, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Intimacy, Kinda (Someone Says Stop and They Stop And Work It Out), Kink Negotiation, Kissing, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus has Daddy Issues, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Neck Kissing, Needy Sub Klaus Hargreeves, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pet Names, Praise Kink, Reframing Trauma, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Safe Sane and Consensual, Safeword Use, Safewords, Sub Klaus Hargreeves, Submission, Triggers, Trust, Vietnam War, enter at your own risk, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-02-26 12:54:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18717493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: “I don’t think of you like that, Dave.”Dave sits on the bed watching and smiling fondly as he strips. “Like what?”“As my dad. My dad’s a fucking son of a bitch. And old. And dead. And kind of a monster. You’re-“ he paused, half naked, fly unzipped, looking at Dave and his handsome face and patient eyes. “Amazing. God, Dave, what are you doing here with me?”~Or~Klaus's attempts at 1960s vernacular slang are about as successful as his other experiments, although not as physically painful as licked batteries and failed pudding waxes (though his platoon might disagree). But Dave is right there offering his time and attention for Klaus's use and Klaus is not prepared at all for what they stumble on together when one particular term lands harder than it should. He's not prepared for anything he digs up with Dave but he isn't alone so maybe it'll be okay. Maybe. [AKA the Daddy Kink Fic Of Feelings]





	1. What About It Daddy Cool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jk_rockin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jk_rockin/gifts).



> So JKRockin said "Klaus Has A Daddy Kink" and I said "Yes but how can I make it plotty and fucking painful?" because I am and always will be That Bitch. And lo, this came to be. Much love to everyone in the discord for putting up with me.

The guys in the platoon throw around all kinds of slang but when Klaus tries it sounds silly. He tells Peterson to “quit being a fucking bozo and pass the chow already I’m fucking starving,” and everyone and their unit winces. He walks up to where Dave, Montgomery and Shepherd are clustered around a small pile of AR-15s and innocently asks “What are you cats up to?” and Montgomery and Shepherd scattered with mumbled excuses and no explanation like a claymore just went off. When their Medic hands him a packaged painkillers extra strength with codeine for his blistered feet and a nerve pill to ward off the fucking waking nightmares that everyone seems to have Klaus throws his arms around Doc Brown cries “Dude That is so groovy I could kiss you.”

Corporal Jack Brown, who is not a doctor but in fact an orderly turned draftee who just got a promotion from the rank of a Medical Specialist which means he outranks everyone in the unit but Sarge especially and definitely Klaus (though Klaus will die before he stops calling him Doc Brown in his own private Back To The Future) and he is not amused. He disentangles himself from the hug and pats him on the shoulder with an awkwardness that reminds him in small measure of Vanya but with far more confidence. “Just doing my job Private. Get it together, Hargeeves, or you’ll stop being a problem soon.” 

“Rude.”

Dave who’s gone with him for malaria horsepills of his own just sighs. “He means you’re gonna toughen up or die, man. Klaus you come off like a total square when you try to sound hip. You gotta stop. I think it’s righteous the way you march to your own drummer but only you can hear the beat. So maybe save whatever you’re trying on for me and just chill around the rest of the guys? Cuz whatever you’re doing now is killing your cool.” It’s kind and thoughtful and genuinely helpful, which is Dave right down to the ground, and also maybe the most devastatingly thing anyone living has ever said to him to date.

His smile is only about 35% forced. The rest of it is just his natural reaction to Dave Katz being himself. “Thanks, Dave.”

“I mean it. Whatever it is you’re doing, trying to sound like Kerouac or Easy Rider or something, I can dig. It’s more fun than field dressing my weapon again or sitting here doing more nothing”

Fuck it. Why not. He racks his brain for all the shit he’s heard people say in the days since arriving that sounded like the came out of either Blanket Beach Party or Bond film. “Sure thing, just didn’t want to put too much of a shine on it and have you studs all thinking need to sectioned again. I come off like a spazzing but soon as these kick in I mellow out.”

And there’s that wince. God, the Sixties look so much easier on tv. “I... wow. Never mind. Don’t do that.”

“Yeah?”

“You sound like my mom when she’s trying to connect to me and my brother. When something is that forced, you can tell.”

Klaus sighs heavily. He gives Dave’s arm a friendly bump in understanding. “That’s what I was suspected. Thanks anyway, Daddy-o.”

Dave doesn’t say anything to that but the line of his shoulders tighten like a wire ready to trip a bomb. Dave isn’t breathing. And suddenly Klaus isn’t breathing either. They’re not moving or talking or speaking and then Dave brushes his shoulder again and when he does, Klaus leans in, putting his weight on Dave’s arm to help hold himself up. It could be nothing. He could be tired or lazy or weird Hargeeves who says and does crazy shit like threaten to kiss the Doc. But he can hear the soft inhale Dave makes when he does it and the way he flexes the muscles in his arms to hold the weight Klaus gives him. Yeah crazy. Crazy good. Crazy brave. 

“We got libo coming up.”

“Three days if we live through it.” 

“Never been to Saigon before.” Klaus says even though that's not entirely true. He's been to Ho Chi Minh City and that's what Saigon would become, when this war was over and America pulled out. But that was almost 20 years ago and more than 30 years in the future, in 2001, when he was a pimply faced tween who couldn't get ahold of enough weed to hold him over for an international flight and the Umbrella Academy assignment had ended quickly and violently leaving behind angry ghosts who had screamed at him, giving him ample chance to put the rigorous language lessons their dad had drilled into him when he wasn't torturing him with the dead, even though at the time, Klaus been crying and on the edge of hysterical and not appreciating just how much Vietnamese he understood and just wanting to go home. He's much more interested visiting pre-fall Saigon with Dave than he ever could have imagined being in anything (except maybe a never ending waterfall of Ecstacy) in his miserable modern life.

“I can show you around a little if you want? We could stick together?” He is trying to sound casual but there’s nothing casual about the way his voice shakes just a little and his need leaks out making that last word just a bit deeper. 

“Sounds like plan to me,” and oh. Oh fuck Klaus felt it that time, not Dave’s pull, that’s been there since the jump. No. The word, the horrible, ugly, scar-riddled, dick-hardened, begging-to-be-reborn word. “Show something new, Daddy.”

“Oh, I will, baby,”he whispers, fists clenched tight. “Just you wait.

In Saigon They dance and they drink and Klaus tries not to think about the way Dave looked at him before they all tromped off the bus and said “Let’s go halves of a room a little further in town.” 

Klaus has never planned sex in his entire life. Tricks, definitely. Sometimes you know you’re going to meet a guy at 8:30 at Denny’s to give some quick bathroom head for an ounce and a grand slam and a glass of milk to keep those bones healthy but that’s not the same as getting a hotel with someone you’ve liked for weeks and engaging in slow burning promise-laden marathon eye fucking sessions for 3 goddamn days. He hits those shots like the world is ending now and not in 50 years over to control his crush instead of the ghosts and isn’t he doing all kinds of new things here in the past? 

“L’Chaim!” Dave cheers, linking their arms to do a terrible vodka shot and grins at him over the rim of the glass. God, the skin of his forearm is so soft and so hot and Klaus is in so much trouble. 

“Yeah, Cheers Daddy.” And then as an afterthought because public, they in in public in 196-fucking-8 and he isn’t even sure if Stonewall has even happened yet because God he is just the worst queer in the world, he add, “O.” It lands flat but if anyone were listening it would pass as just Hargeeves being a square again. 

Dave hears it for what it is, Klaus calling him Daddy like some sick incestuous loser. Or Luther probably. He jerks for half a beat before moving the rest of the way in to drink. Klaus thinks he hears him say, “Bottoms up baby,” But he’s not sure. He hopes he did. He really does. All he knows is that when they are finished with the shot that look is back, the one that makes Klaus feel like he’s going to burn alive.

“I’m gonna go dance.” Klaus declares then bodily throws himself onto the floor and lets the combination of good chemicals and good music carry his thoughts away. It works just as well to turn off his brain when a bass line is covered by John Fogherty and Mama Cass as it did to Ellie Goulding and Dead Mau5. He is lost in the power of that collective club energy for what feels like a geologic age before the spirit of James St. James abandons him to returns to the future, (not that he’s dead) but blaming Klaus’ colliding with Dave like a total asshole on a ghost would be so much neater. Still embarrassing but he could live with himself easier. And no ghost would have made him make that stupid fist. It’s worse than calling his squad mates “cats” but Dave just looking at him and Klaus looks back, trapped, pinned like when Diego used to draft him to play Circus with his stupid knives.

This time when they get a drink, it’s out of like of site and they’re not actually drinking. Dave smiles so much and he means it. Klaus means his smiles too they’re just not so warm and they don’t hold up when Dave calls him baby again, just drops it into the conversation, taking it from casual to more serious than death has ever been to Klaus. 

They’re talking about how tiring things are, how relieved they are to be stopped for a while and how wild then nights been. It’s party talk Klaus has spent half his life perfecting so it comes seemingly nowhere Dave says “You make me crazy, baby, you know that?”

His whole body turns at that and Dave is waiting. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I want— “ Dave’s hand came up and caressed his cheek. “God, Klaus, baby.”

No. That wasn’t enough. Klaus _had_ to know. He leaned into the touch trying and failing not to beg with his eyes and words. 

“What? What’d you want? You can have it, Daddy, anything, please.” If he had dignity (and as an addict he’s pretty sure he threw most of that away years ago the first time when he moved from “nothing with needles ever” to “yeah, just don’t blow the vein this time” or maybe one of the messy rehab withdrawals afterward) the last shreds of it were handed to Private First Class David Katz when he gave him his ugliest need for approval and deepest desire for warped affection at the same time wrapped in the magic word. 

God, Sir Reggie would be disgusted. For once he wouldn’t have been able to blame the stodgy old fucker. Klaus was pretty disgusted with himself but that word kept coming out of his mouth and he kept getting hard and his insides kept going squishy-soft. Perfect. 

“Shit baby, you make me want to take care of you,” Dave says, his voice ragged, like admitting that is costing him too. 

Then Dave kisses him and Klaus goes deaf and blind. Dave’s mouth is on him and the only senses that matter are taste and touch. They can’t stay like this with eyes all around, and but they can’t stop either. That much is obvious in every breath they trade between them. This is his world now. He lives for Dave’s big square hands and smart tongue. He’s never leaving. All Klaus can do is make the best of it, adapt to this time and need so that he doesn't ever have to be without again. 

“Hotel?” Dave asks breathlessly.

“Yeah, Daddy. “ Klaus agrees, because he's going to have this if it kills him.

Dave drags him out by the belt loops and Klaus loves every step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: 
>   * Montgomery and Shepherd are a nod to the Handler's first big TV role as Addison Montgomery-Shepherd (the She Shepherd and then just Montgomery after her divorce went through) on Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice because fuck yes, I loved her so much as Addison and always will.
>   * The slang is bad on purpose. I am sorry but also not sorry.
>   * Malaria was a concern for American GIs in Vietnam and honestly, not a lot of progress has been made in prevention since the discovery of quinine but it was taken in pill form
>   * There doesn't appear to be cell phones or internet or really any computers in the TUA universe however we know techno music does exist because of the rave. So I figure that while personal computers are not widespread if they exist at all (and honestly I dont think they do), the sound tech needed for techno, dubstep and other electronic music which actually has its most notable roots in the Radiophonics lab at the BBC 60s which is where the Doctor Who Theme came from - would still exist so DeadMau5 and Ellie Goulding and other electronica artists are still out there doing their thing. They just dont have Insta or Twitter or any of the other social media platforms to promote their work.
>   * Chapter title from Daddy Cool by Boney M. covered by Placebo 
> 



	2. How You Like It Daddy

“So, I don’t want to have sex with my dad,” Klaus says when they get in the hotel. It doesn’t have a lot of what he’d call amenities but the bathroom is western style with hot water and the bed is full sized and he has coconut oil in a small flask in his duffle he bought in an open air market ostensibly for cooking but mostly because it smelled nice in an ocean of foul odors and years of stealing cosmetics had taught him he could safely moisturize and jerk off with it. 

He can make the point about finding Reginald Hargeeves disgusting and seeing him as his father while he digs out the oil and tosses it on the bed. It’s called multitasking and while he gained the skill in the Academy, he perfected it in prison.

“I don’t think of you like that, Dave.” 

Dave sits on the bed watching and smiling fondly as he strips. “Like what?”

“As my dad. My dad’s a fucking son of a bitch. And old. And dead. And kind of a monster. You’re-“ he paused, half naked, fly unzipped, looking at Dave and his handsome face and patient eyes. “Amazing. God, Dave, what are you doing here with me?” He rubs a hand hard through his hair trying to scratch his brain. “I’m a junkie who wants to vicariously fuck his dad. Fuck, I’m poison.”

“Baby, c’mere.”

He’s weak to a kind voice and a soft hand. Pogo used to pull that shit on him all the time before he realized it was a trap that fed right into whatever Sir Reginald wanted him to do. He hasn’t been screwed to Hell and back by Dave yet, he doesn’t have any resistance so he goes. 

He is not mentally or physically prepared for the way Dave cups the back of his thighs to pull him into his lap. He ends up with his face in Dave’s neck, tucked into his embrace and with gentle kisses blessing his hairline, forehead, brows and eyelids. Honestly Klaus would be feel more at ease on an alien planet than being fucking... cherished like this. 

“You’re not poison, baby. You keeping me alive out here.”

“This is fucked up.” Klaus whispers. “I’m fucked up but I’m too goddamn fucked up to stop myself, not that that’s news.” He’s being honest again. When did he start telling the truth and what is it about Dave that makes it tear out of him? 

“You want me. Hey, Klaus,” Dave leans back an inch and presses their brows together. “You’re okay. People like what they like. I like it when you call me that. Doesn’t mean I think you’re a kid. I don’t think that.”

“Then what _is_ this?”

It's not like Klaus doesn't know what kink is. He's familiar. He spent a lifetime taking orders in the Umbrella Academy and he's fallen right back into it in the command structure of This Man's Army with an ease of a duck diving from the air to water. It only took a few Academy kidnapping exercises for all his siblings to figure out he was having a lot more fun than they were being tied up. It didn't take too long to discover he liked the sting and burn and bite of various types of pain as he encountered them over the years training, including being the only one of them to fall into an endorphin high under the rhythmic jab of the jab of the tattoo needle, which is fucking lucky as hell, considering how many things in his life have hurt him. 

He'd had questions about that when he was younger and thankfully, their father insisted they be well-educated (so as not to embarrass him) so the public library was always one of the few places they were allowed to visit without his strict supervision (so long as they didn't make a scene) and, well Venus in Furs, Justine and The Story of O were right there, on the shelves, where any one could read them. It only took one librarian to spot him flipping through Fanny Hill, furtive and desperate for scraps of information in between the archaic and difficult language to issue him a library card and get the ball rolling because the librarians at the Argyle Public Library were not only true public servants who would go on to know really their way around a Narcan pen, but were also closet anarchists who always called for EMS and never the cops when they stumbled across an OD in their bathroom that could recognize a future renegade queer when they saw one, even at twelve years old. By the time he bailed on the whole superhero shitshow, it seemed like every single employee had made sure that he left with a different book: Maurice, Tipping the Velvet, The Price of Salt, Giovanni's Room and every other piece of queer fiction with a bland cover they could dump in his hands pass off as literature. He slipped out of the house into the world with at least some idea of his options and interests and why it was so vital for a person like him to know how to run in his high heels.

Only Ben ever knew where he got his info because he was the only one cared to ask what Klaus was reading. Ben was always interested if there were books involved. But Ben isn't here and this is different.

This isn't a book. This isn't a hand wrapped around his throat. This isn't yes ma'am, no ma'am, please hit me harder, ma'am. This is Dave and what he does with Dave actually matters which, wow, when the hell was the last time anything mattered to him? 

He honestly can't remember. The library card mattered, before he left the Academy. Getting his next fix, that mattered, before coming to Nam. Not getting fucking murdered when he was in prison? No. No, that didn't matter, really, so much as finding who was holding and how to get them to hook him up because god, there were so many dead inside and they were all so angry and scared. So yeah, nothing he can remember. Shit. Fuck. 

He could just open his mouth but he's terrified of what will come out. Ha, that's a new experience. He hasn't cared enough about what happens to him beyond _make it stop_ or _yes, more_ to be afraid of what kind of impact his words had. Those stakes were too low for him to bother changing. 

His whole world suddenly feels like it hinges on what he says, yet another way Dave has changed everything. The tiny part of his brain capable of rational thought is aware that Dave likes it when he calls him Daddy, that he gets hot and flushed and it's what got them here in the first place. He wants it. Yeah, Klaus is aware

But the spectral presence of his actual father is so much larger in his mind than any real ghost could ever be that it's frozen him solid with the horror of it all. How could he even dare bring Reginald motherfucking Hargreeves here, now, into this? Being with Dave feels sacred and the even the thought of the old man is fucking defiling it. 

"I'm sorry." 

And he is. He is so sorry. Klaus doesn't apologize for much. He feels the world owes him more apologies than he should ever have to give, really, but shit, he's fucking sorry now. 

"No, I'm sorry, baby. Hey, Klaus, look at me." Dave's strong warm hands take both sides of his face in their strong grip and unless he shuts his eyes, he doesn't really have a choice. A soft smile greets him and he really doesn't deserve that now. "I want to have a better answer for you than that it's just something you say that I like, baby, but I haven't really got it yet."

"I shouldn't have done this."

"But I want it."

"No, this is monumentally fucked up and I say that here in the middle of the most fucked up American war in a long history of supremely fucked up American wars, Dave."

"It's not. It's good. I love it. I told you, I like taking care of you. Sarge didn't need to tell me, I knew I needed to look after you because you were mine the minute we met, since the universe dropped you in my goddamn lap." He laughs and Klaus smiles because yeah, they may carefully avoid digging too deeply into how he appeared that first night but he is still in Dave's lap, literally at the moment. It's an accepted impossibility because everything seems possible here. Daves thumbs stroke over his cheekbones like he's trying to pet his smile. "There you are. Yeah. We're fucking beshert so who cares what works so long as we know you're mine, and I'm yours. Everything else is just, I don't know, window dressing."

"But it's not about him," Klaus repeats because he doesn't know that word and he cannot look that kind of feeling in the face right now and he really, really needs Dave to understand this, especially. Because it really isn't about Sir Reginald except for how everything he does and is ties back to the man. He knows that seems like a lot, and it probably is objectively but it's just the foundation that made him. It's not who is. "You're not like him. You're everything he wasn't."

Dave's grin turns sharkish and oh, fuck, he's hot like that. Klaus is reminded that they are both killers, that they both know blood. Dave is safe for him to cling to but Klaus has seen him in a firefight and knows he's not a safe man. "Good. Fuck him. Everything you've told me about him makes me glad your father's dead, Klaus. Maybe that's why you want me to be your Daddy."

That...makes way too much sense. He tries to look away but Dave is still holding his face in his hands so it doesn't really work. Fuck. 

"Baby, you gotta talk to me. You love to talk."

He shrugs. "You're not wrong."

"So then say it."

He swallows. "Dave, I-- ."

"No. Try again, baby. Who am I?" Dave's thumb strokes over his lower lip in encouragement. Klaus flicks out his tongue because they feel instantly chapped and catches the tip, tasting skin. "I wanna hear it. Gets me so fucking hot."

Klaus closes eyes and takes a deep breath. "Daddy."

"God, yeah, baby, I am. " 

Dave is broader than he is, stronger, bigger. Klaus has been able to take down groan men since he was a kid but that’s all aikido and the element of surprise. Dave puts him on his belly and blankets his back with every inch of himself, smothered him in heat that is like is met from the inferno that roars up from the pit of Klaus’ need to meet him. 

“Oh, fuck, Daddy, please.”

“Yeah,” Dave breathes wet against the shell of his ear before sucking his lobe into his mouth to torture him as he grinds his cock into the crack of his ass, so close to where Klaus wants him but not quite. By he lets it go Klaus is a whining mess. “Tell Daddy what you need, baby. Let me give it to you. 

Trap, his brain screams, once your weaknesses are known they can be used against you. But this is Dave, he reminds himself, who literally gave him the shirt off his back and the drawers off his ass for days until their Sergeant could req supplies for him. Dave, who taught him how to hold and fire his gun and shoved his own into his hands when his wouldn't fire and pick up his weapon and make it work. Dave, who shared his beer and sweet talked Doc Brown out of nerve pills "for the new kid, man, you remember what it was like your first night in the dark out here" that Klaus' own charm had failed in getting when the angry faces of dead Charlie had started to creep in on him and no one had known him well enough to share a hit of anything stronger. Dave, who listened to him tell the plot of Star Wars, The Dark Crystal, and Jurassic Park on long hikes humping through the bush and even longer waits with nothing to do in camp as if he were sharing the best stories ever written and never questioned where they came from. Dave, who didn't judge when he did make friends with Matthews, the skinny kid from St. Louis who who smoked heroin and was hesitant to share his precious supply but willing when Klaus offered him a quick combatjack behind the latrine but reminded him to was his hands after. Dave wouldn't use what he gave him against him.

It’s still too much. “Dunno.”

“You do. Tell me, baby. Be good for me.”

Good? God, what does that even mean? Good was biting wires and stinging glass and punishing blows and being treated like filth because he was filthy. He doesn’t know how to be what Dave wants when he’s only ever been a successful failure and that might just be the saddest thing about all of this, what has him crying into the pillow where even the specter of Sir Reginald didn’t break him. 

“I can’t.” He sobs and his heart is breaking because for once in his miserable life he wanted to be more but he knows better. He knows himself. “Daddy I-I-I can’t. I’m sorry. Oh god I’m s-sorry.”

If this is how Diego feels when words don’t work he’s never going to mock him again, on the off chance that he doesn’t just die in a rice patty in Ng Tran. 

“What can't you do? You’re waiting for me, you’re talking. You’re trying so hard, baby, what don’t you think you’re doing?”

He says it because Dave asks. He wouldn’t for anyone else but it makes him feel small and repulsive and so fucking turned on and ashamed of himself and also a little turned into n that even if he can’t give Dave what he wants, he can do as he’s fucking told. “I can’t be good, Daddy.” Another involuntary sob tears free before he can stop it. “I’m sorry.” He manages to pull it together enough to sound almost coherent when he explains “ I don’t mean to be like this. I’m just broken, Daddy and I- Fuck, I want to. I want to be good for you.”

“All you have to do to be good is do what I tell you and let me take care of you, right? You're already letting me to take care of you." There's a soft kiss to the back of his neck. "My fault for not telling you what to do."

"No."

"Yeah. It's okay. So just, hm, put your hands above your head and hang onto your left wrist with your right hand. Do that and let me take care of you, and you'll be good for me no matter what else happens."

That creep of suspicion will not leave. "It can't be that easy."

"Sure it can. Daddy's making the rules now, baby, and if Daddy says that's all you have to do to be good for me, then that's all you have to do." He kisses done another notch of his spine. "Do what Daddy says and let Daddy take care of you so that you can be good."

Klaus does as he's told but it doesn't feel like enough. His right hand latches on to his left wrist like it will save him from drowning as Dave lines up behind him and it's good. It is. He's got good hands, square and strong, and hands that have never done anything but reach out to him and show him what to do since he got to Nam. They wait for him on the shit days when he pulls the short straw on tunnel duty with a pack of smokes and a shared ration of chocolate. They open him up quick and steady, fingers slick with the oil he brought with only a little roughness that's more grounding than any of the pleasure, kissing his neck and telling him how well he's doing and Klaus feels like he's falling into the fucking void. 

Sex is good. Klaus likes sex. He loves sex actually. Dave pushing inside him is a stinging relief that he can taste on the back of his throat and the roof of his mouth like coppery blood. He doesn't give any quarter, takes the curls at the back of his head in his fist and pushes in all in one slide and Klaus can hear himself moan like the slut he is. "Daddy, fuck, ohhhh."

His dick is thick and long, but not obnoxiously so. He might just be own personal Klaus's Goldicocks, filling him up and stretching him out but not so much it hurts or distracts, not too big or too small, just fucking right. 

"Yeah, baby, let me in. Take it."

He's not a "look ma, no hands" kind of comer but he might manage it with Dave, calling him baby and coring his hole and hammering his prostate with his steady rhythm, inexorable as the march and Dave seems to like the way he does as he's told and takes it.

"Oh, god, yeah, so pretty. That's it, baby, come on, just take it."

He shivers a little at the praise and tries to do as he's told. He knows how to take orders. They've been humping across the fucking rain forest for weeks and he's been following orders just fucking swell and before that he was a good little slave for Sir Reginald, just like the others - most of the time. This should be easy. It is easy. Dave is so fucking _good_ that Klaus wants to give himself over to his care and let himself be. 

But he is still falling. The pleasure is distant as Klaus falls through the vacuum he's been lost in for so long that he honestly doesn't remember a time he wasn't empty inside. It's a dull cold that he doesn't remember being without. Most of the time, it's not so present. The hollow vertigo is a companion that he can keep in another room. If he isn't high, it doesn't try to steal him from his moments.

He can feel the emptiness wash over him now, muting the touch of Dave's loving hands and the sound of his voice and the feel of his own fingers on his wrist digging in and the sheets on his naked skin and the signals from inside own body telling him this is bliss. It's all too quiet, now. It's happening outside him, almost as if it's someone else having sex with the man he's been falling in love with. It all seems to matter less and less as time goes on until Klaus might as well not be there.

It's only because Dave has spent so many weeks asking him what's wrong basically every other that it even occurs to Klaus to say anything. 

He wouldn't have, before. If they'd met in the 21st century, he'd have let Dave fuck him til he came, faked an orgasm, got out of bed, and left. He'd have let this end there, found some pills, and shrugged it off calling this whole thing a draw.

But Dave's been checking in with him pretty much constantly since he arrived in the this war. Dave really does care about him. He's proved it countless times in a hundred little ways and a dozen verbally specific ones and he'd want to know. He'd be angry if Klaus didn't say something and for the first time in forever, Klaus cares if he disappoints someone. That is, miraculously, enough to break through the grey shell surrounding him. 

The first time he tries to say it barely makes his lips move but the second time, he manages to actually get out, "Stop," in an audible volume. It sounds pathetic and he feels sick even saying it but Dave does. He stops instantly, pulls out and rolls off him and onto his side so that he can look at Klaus in the face.

"Hey," Dave says, gentle and concerned and clearly a little afraid, "What's going on?"

He gives Dave a wavering smile. "Sorry. This isn't working."

Dave nods and ducks in to kiss his temple. Klaus closes his eyes against the monsoon of feeling that storms him, pouring in without any mercy or surcease like the rains in October. He can barely breathe with it, there's so much after so little.

"It's okay, baby," Dave says against his hairline. 

"I didn't mean to. I was just...not here. This doesn't work."

"What would work better? Where should we be?"

Klaus bites his lip and tries to think. He's honestly not sure. It's not like they have a lot of options. He tries to think of something that would work, something that feels as real to the rain and the war and Dave telling him he can be good and has a horrible memory of the hours before he came here, tied up and detoxing ugly in a fucking closet with only Ben and the ghosts of the people Hazel and Chacha murdered for company as he was thrown into flashbacks childhood horror over and over. Compared to that, honestly, crawling through VC tunnels are nothing. A cakewalk. He knows he'll either get to the end and see daylight again or he'll just fucking die but either way the end will come quick. Even with their LT or Sarge holding the reigns, no one is making him do anything he didn't sign up for.

And that's it isn't it. He signed up for this. He signed up for Dave and Nam and tonight, he signed up for giving himself over and be good for his Daddy. And the one thing he could never, ever give his own father was his fear. Reginald Hargreeves hadn't fucking deserved anything of his or his siblings, not with the way he tortured all of them for his own twisted ends. Dave, though, Dave has never been anything but kind and open, and he'll value the gesture even if he didn't understand the gift.

"I, uh, I think we should go into the bathroom."

"Shower?"

"No." Klaus brings his index finger to his mouth and begins to gnaw on his nail. "Floor. With the lights out. I…" He stops himself before his voice cracks, licks his lips and tries again. He will not cry saying this. Fuck his old man and fuck himself, he will not. He's going to have this. He has waited his whole fucking life for someone to look at him the way Dave is right now, for something that he could have for himself, and he will not ruin it for himself. He holds onto that with his teeth and tries again. "I need to be good for you in the dark, Daddy."

Dave's eyebrows furrow. He pulls his hand out of his mouth and kisses the fingertip. "What's that mean?"

"We go in, lock the door, turn out the light, and you don't let me out." He can feel his eyes grow wet as he says it. "Daddy, you can't let me out until you think I've been good enough."

"That… that doesn't sound like something you'll like, baby. "Dave pets his hair as he speaks with the hand not holding his. It feels so good. Klaus thinks he could live his life with nothing but that and be a better man for it.

Klaus laughs and it sounds like a broken thing, like hard plastic after a grenade's torn through it. "No. I fucking hate it." He takes a deep breath. It doesn't help but Dave's gaze, serious and soft, But I need it, Daddy." He wants to say 'please' there too but he can't make himself beg for this. He's dreading it too much. 

"Okay." Dave is still frowning but he doesn't question him. 

And Klaus...fuck, he loves him. He just loves him, that's all there is to it. No one's ever just listened to him when he said he needed something like that before, not once in his entire life. He kisses Dave because he has to, he has to kiss this beautiful man who listens and trusts and cares for him more than anyone in all of space and time, his own personal cosmic miracle. 

"I should probably have a safeword," Klaus says when he pulls back for air, because Dave is giving him so much. He should be responsible about this. 

"Safeword?"

Klaus nods. Fucking time travel. It's hard to keep up with what parlance has gotten where. "Something to say to make it stop if I lose my shit completely, I'm going to try and get you to let me go but I don't actually want you to. Stop plus."

"Like what?"

Klaus shrugs. Classics are good. "Red work for you?"

"Red's fine."

"If you're not okay with what we're doing, you can say red too."

Dave nods but Klaus already knows, he won't ever use it. He doesn't try and push. He just leans in and rests his forehead against Dave's for a moment before rolling out of bed. He has to do this now before he loses his nerve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: 
>   * Librarians are fucking heroes but as one of the only truly free places left, they are frequented by the homeless and recently, many public librarians have been trained in using Narcan to counter opioid overdoses. 
>   * All the books listed are either BDSM or queer classics that anyone can just check out of the library.
>   * Chapter title from Freek-a-Leek by Petey Pablo
> 



	3. Daddy Love Me Strong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This episode deals directly with the trauma from what Sir Reginald did to Klaus in the crypt as a child. More specific warnings in the notes.

Klaus gets up and walks into the small en suite bathroom with way more confidence than he feels. It's not a large room but the floor is tile, white and smooth and easy to clean, and cold. The room is maybe six by six with less than eight square feet of empty floor space between the sink and vanity, the base of the bathtub, a claw footed number with a rickety shower hookup that is very fragile looking and vaguely European-but-not-quiet in the way everything claiming to be Western in Vietnam seems to be, and the small, barely adequate toilet. Klaus glances around and wonders when exactly he turned into a fucking idiot and settles on his knees on the floor. It's cold against his bare legs and when Dave joins him a moment later, equally naked and beautiful like a statue, he smiles at the sight of him.

"You started without me."

Klaus shakes his head in denial. "Lights're on. I didn't do anything."

"Ah. Okay. Close your eyes then, baby."

Klaus doesn't want to. He wants to keep them open so he can stay present in the past, in 1968 instead of the 90s or a postY2K world, in a bathroom that is definitely not a fucking crypt, bright white instead of dull grey, with Dave instead of all alone. But he can do what he's told when it's simple even if it's not as rewarding or as satisfying.

"Good boy. I'm going to close the door and turn out the light. You can open them whenever you're ready."

Klaus doesn't do it immediately. He waits until he can feel Dave beside him. He waits until hands land on his shoulders, smooth down his arms, wrap around his chest. He breathes a few times, shallow and fragile, before opening his eyes and regrets it because he is back in a small box in the dark and he is drowning in terror. 

There's no light what comes in under the door and even that sliver is almost nothing. It actually does more to make the room seem claustrophobic and crushing and he wants out. He needs to get out. It's too small and took dark. Fuck. Fuck he can't breathe. "Please, please," he begs because he is not above begging to get out of this, "Daddy, please let me out."

"No, baby. You want to be good for me right?" 

He nods but remembers that in this terrible darkness, god he hates the dark so ffucking much, Dave cant see him. He wants to be good so he has to use his words here. Oh god. "I want to be good, Daddy."

"Then you'll stay." Dave's fingers stroke through his hair, straightening his curls and letting the bounce back. Straighten and release, straighten and release. "If you stay like I ask, you'll be a good boy, baby."

It doesn't feel right this time. Dave's hands do, his soft voice, even the heavy ugly dark that makes him feel small and terrified but... "No." Not his safeword, he's not safewording out from Dave who is so sweet and good that sugar wouldn't melt in his mouth, just trying to find the flaw.

"No?"

He curls up tighter on bathroom tile closer to the door and tub than the toilet. It's not the same as the floor concrete mausoleum but it's close enough. "I don't know. Not baby."

"Okay." A kiss lands on his shoulder out of nowhere, joined a moment later by warm fingers on the back of his neck wrapping around to rest on his carotid. 

The dead used to come out of nowhere like that. He'll take this over their sheirking demands and ghoulish faces any minute of any day. He's glad he's still drunk enough to keep them away. Dave doesn't press, just strokes soothingly with his fingertips as a prelude to asking, "What do you want?" and his words are so simple it throws Klaus completely.

From his past and decades in the future, Sir Reginald's voice sweeps into the room and over him like a particularly hateful poltergeist, **You must become the master of your own life, Number Four, or it will become the master of you.** That memory is a nightmarish specter worse than any ghost that towered over him as he recalls how the man who he called father kept Klaus from freedom.

He presses his face into his knees and tries not to cry as he thinks about how that son of a bitch tortured him, put him on hard ground so similar to this but never asked what he wanted, not once. Only when he starts to get angry - the pure, beautiful, incandescent, napalm-fire bright anger that he only learned he even could feel in the terrible first month after Ben died - does he start to cry. The tears leaking into his leg hair. He starts to laugh too because fuck Sir Reggie, fuck his lessons, really fuck everything. He doesn't want to be a of master of anything. He never has and he doesn't have to be. 

Dave's offered to be his master instead, at least for now. Dave wants to be. All he has to do is let Dave fucking have it. Dave is alive, willing, his hand pressing warm and solid against the back of his neck in the near-black providing support he never got in that miserable place that was supposed to be his home and he can do let go. He wants to. He gets to choose here. 

He just has to say it.

That's the hard part, of course. He knows he's a chatty motherfucker but it's easy to talk about nothing. Saying things that matter is a difficult business when you grew up in never talking about anything. But he wants, oh fuck, he wants. And lucky for him, he's got an addict's soul and he's never been afraid to run a painful gauntlet to get to something he knows will feel good. And, here in the dark tomb of their own making, Dave can't see his face when he takes the leap.

"Number Four."

"What's that?"

"Call me Number Four, Daddy, please."

"No. I mean, of course I will, Number Four, when you ask like that, so polite and good for Daddy. I just meant, why?"

Klaus closes his eyes. That doesn't make it any easier. "Because that's my name, Daddy."

"You said your name's Klaus."

He knows the sound he makes his hysterical. He doesn't know if it's a laugh or a sob but he's not so unhinged he can't speak. "Yeah, we all have regular names. Just not on our birth certificates."

In the space where his world is still spinning without him, he hears Dave inhale a breath before he heaves a wounded sigh. "Oh, Klaus."

The pity in the air is toxic. Klaus literally can't bear it. "Daddy, please." 

"Okay, Number Four." Dave's back drapes over his and his arms wrap around his middle. "It's alright. Daddy's got you."

"I'm supposed to stay until I'm not afraid anymore, Daddy."

"I'll say with you, Number Four. You're doing beautifully."He kisses the shell of Klaus's ear and he shivers, combination of the fear and soft sensation of Dave's lips making his cock harden again. "You're so brave." 

Klaus does sob then, hard and ugly, one word, gagged and raw before turning in his arms to bury his face against Dave's neck. Dave pets his hair and wraps an arm around his shoulder.

"It's alright Number Four. You're safe here. Daddy won't let anything happen to you. It's just you and me. The door's locked and I'll protect you. It's alright."

"Daddy, I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Don't be sorry, Number Four. You're doing fine," He tips his head back and kisses his mouth and Klaus falls into it, kisses back with his eyes closed, shuddering and shaking and wondering if this this feeling - this deep, desperate, surrounded feeling - was what it feels like to be loved.

Klaus finds Dave's features in the dark with his fingertips. His straight brows, his strong jaw, his round cheeks. He pulls back so that he can breathe "Thank you, Daddy," and dives back in to kissing him because when he's kissing Dave, the dark doesn't feel so heavy and the tiny, hard box they're in doesn't feel so much like a tomb.

Dave lets Klaus kiss himself calm for what feels like forever but was probably only a few minutes before he kisses his forehead. "What do you need, Number Four? What can Daddy do for you, hm?"

And isn't that a question. He isn't quite sure. Something good. Something to make this experience different from being locked in the mausoleum. Something grounding. "Fuck me?" he offers because sometimes, the old standbys are the best and he really doesnt want his crazy to blow his chance to have all of Dave's nine inches, cut, in his ass. Seriously, who knows when the next chance is going to come up and he's not going to do it out in the bush where anyone could see and he's got swamp ass. 

"Yeah, geez, baby, that sounds good. I'm going to step out for a minute and grab the lube we left by the bed. Wait here and I'll be right back."

Klaus can feel his panic roar up, burning away all his progress at the very idea of Dave leaving and his fingers turn into claws on Dave's arms. "Wait. I changed my mind. I can just blow you. That's fun too right?"

If Dave flinches, Klaus can't see it. He feels his lips in his hair, on his hairline, fumbling down his face over his nose until they're pressed brow to brow. "You said you wanted to be good for me."

Fuck. Fuck, he did definitely say that. And he does want to be good for him.. Klaus can feel his nails dig into Dave's soft skin but he can't make himself stop. Dave doesn't pull away. He just rubs the side of his nose against Klaus's in the dark in a gentle caress. "

"Wait for me until I come back. Stay right here, baby, and trust me that it'll be okay. Show me how good you can be. I know you can do it, Number Four. You can do anything you want when you try. I've seen you."

God. God he hates Dave a little for that. Because he makes Klaus believe it when he says shit like that. He makes him believe that he can do things like keep humping when his feet are bleeding blisters and assemble a rifle when all the pieces look the same and that he's the guy who should talk to the locals in the ville they're stopping in because he knows some Vietnamese, knows all kinds of languages thanks to how he was raised, and his skills, limited as they are, have a value. Dave makes him believe in himself and he makes the rest of their unit believe in him too not just because he's right most of the time but because Klaus wants to prove him right. He wants to prove him right again now, to be good for him, to do this small thing and it's awful. 

"Yes, Daddy." It's awful and he's going to do it because he'll do anything for this man. Goddamnit. Why is he like this?

"God, I am so fucking lucky. Thank you."

Oh, yeah, thats why. 

"Please hurry?" he begs, hating how small and desperate he sounds.

"I will. I promise, baby. And if you need me, you shout 'red' and I'll come running, okay?" 

When Dave kisses him, Klaus tastes the salt from his own tears and hates himself for his weakness. Dave's still holding him and he's already crying like a sad little bitch at the idea of being alone in the dark. He is so fucking pathetic, he wants to kill himself, Jesus Christ. What he actually says when they break apart is "Okay." because that kind of talk isn't conducive to productive scening in his experience. 

"Okay. I'll be right back, baby. You can do this." Dave promises. He kisses him one last time and then he's leaving. 

Klaus hates how cold he feels when Dave lets him go. He's never felt so cold in his whole life and the moment of blessed light when the door opens only lasts a few seconds before he's back in the dark again and that might be the worst thing that's ever fucking happened. 

And okay, that's fucking dramatic, he knows that, considering the war going on right outside their room, and the screaming, crying dead who are always a few minutes away from him but god, there is ice crawling up his feet and ass through the tile and the dark is pressing in on him like the crushing walls of the trash compactor in Star Wars only this is real. This is fucking nightmare and he knows that if he were just a little more sober, they'd be here, the dead, shouting in Vietnamese about how he's a murderer, about how Dave is a killer, about the Americans and the French and the families they've lost and the children who are alone and what he needs to do to help and how he needs to get out of their country or throw himself off a cliff or blow up his unit and he won't be able to stop it. 

The old grey specters from his childhood are already on top of him, which are worse because he can't stop him like he can stop the recent dead with a few stiff drinks or a hit. They claw at his memory in the black and they hate him, they're jealous of him, they want him to suffer, and they will make him hurt and they're never ever Ben who knows how to stay calm, who could keep him grounded from another plane and a different existence but isn't here now and hasn't been since he landed in the past and is the only sacrifice Klaus isn't sure he's willing to keep making for Dave. Fuck. Fuck. Goddamnit fuck. 

Klaus starts crying at some point and he doesn't realize it until he's sobbing so hard he's hyperventilating. That was inevitable. He always breaks in small, dark spaces. He's fragile. He's got This Side Up printed on his forehead and that is not suggestion. Every time he gets tossed around, he breaks further. One day he's going to shatter and the pieces will never get put back together, just like that egg nursery rhyme. He can never remember which one since his dad wasn't exactly fan of Mother Goose.

It's not going to happen today though because right around the time he feels like he's going to give himself a panic attack, the door opens and light floods his tomb again. He squints at the tall silhouette standing over him and feels like a child again, curled around his knees. "Please, let me out" he begs because he has never been above begging. Those are his siblings, who had pride. Not him. He was never possessed of dignity, only self-preservation. "Please, I don't want to do this anymore."

"Oh, Number Four," the deep voice echoes around in his head it's soft and gentle where Klaus was expecting it to be harsh and disappointed. "But you're doing so well. Are you sure you don't want to finish?"

He flinches because this isn't not right. This is not fucking right. No one encourages him. No one tells him he's doing a good job. That doesn't happen except sometimes at in treatment (which apart from the court orders are probably he keeps going back when they keep not working) but he's not in the dark there. This is wrong. This is not how this happened and this is not how the nightmare plays out.

He blinks a few more times, eyes adjusting to the light, and Dave solidifies in the doorway and Klaus crashes back into himself. Oh. Right. He agreed to this. He asked for this. He laughs but it comes out another sob and suddenly, Dave is on the floor in front of him. "Hey. Number Four. Klaus, listen, I'm so proud of you. You've been so brave."

"I- I don't really know what just happened." Klaus offers, the combined emotional whiplash of whatever that subspace-flashback-mindfuck was is making him feel headachey and woozy. He looks at Dave and then over his shoulder into the hotel room to try and play it off and oh hey, he did get the lube, he just dropped it when he saw what a fucking trainwreck Klaus had become. Good this is the least sexy scene Klaus has ever been a part of and it's all his fault. God, he's a mess. Dave doesn't seem to mind because his calloused hands take hold of Klaus's face and his thumbs stroke through his beard and over his moustache, reminding him that he is an adult and not a little boy trapped in the dark. "I freaked out."

"It's okay. We're okay."

"Are we?"

"Yeah. We are. You're okay."

"Daddy," he tries and it doesn't stick or catch. It feels good. It feels right. 

"That's right. Daddy's got you." Dave promises, another of his solid promises. "C'mon." He wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls. "Let's go. You've been brave enough for today."

Klaus lets himself be pulled to his feet and tucked under Dave's shoulder, their bare bodies pressed together. He finds himself dazed and breathless and maybe even safe there as he's led back to bed, because holy shit, he actually believes him. And isn't that something? 

Curling up in the sheets with Dave, Klaus exhales and feels something in his chest unclench, maybe for the first time. When one of Dave's hands reaches for his, he takes it and clutches it to his chest. Dave kisses the closes bit of him he can reach in response, which is the side of his ear, and all Klaus knows is that he doesn't ever want to let go of him and he isn't ever going to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning:  
> Klaus recreates his experience in the mausoleum to reframe the experience positively through a consent-based D/s lens with Dave. Dave leaves the room as part of a scene and Klaus has a flashback which Dave helps pull him out of. the scene deals with themes of extreme claustrophobia, abusive confinement, fear of the dark, and minor audio-visual hallucinations from being triggered.
> 
> Notes: 
>   * What Klaus is doing is a real intervention that's done in therapy called, among other things, reframing. BDSM can be used to do it, because pretty much anything can be used as an intervention if the intention is there however I do not intend this story as a manual or suggestion to do so without first addressing your issues with a professional and making a plan for the fall out you could face by retriggering yourself. Its a really bad do to this without being well-informed of the psychological and physical consequences of trauma on the mind and body which are just...so numerous.
>   * Ben is not in 1968 for the purposes of this story. It just works better this way though I love him and do honestly headcanon that he went to 1968 with Klaus until canon tells me otherwise.
>   * Chapter title from Daddy Daddy by Ruth Brown
> 


**Author's Note:**

> Title from I Don't Want To Go Down To The Basement by The Ramones


End file.
